Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 14, Number 29, DeMotte, Jasper County, 2 June 1944 — PURDUE SCIENTIST PROVES GOOD SOIL MANAGEMENT PAYS [ARTICLE]

PURDUE SCIENTIST PROVES GOOD SOIL MANAGEMENT PAYS

Dr. Scarseth Shows How Proper Nourishment Boosts Output.

LAFAYETTE, IND.—Breaking the bottlenecks of plant hunger, and stepping up production of poor soils to a high level within a span of a single year is a development of agricultural science that covers tremendous possibilities today, when food is just as important as munitions, according to Dr. George B. Scarseth, Soil Chemist of Purdue University Agricultural Experiment Station. “All our best land is producing to its limit,” said Dr. Scarseth, “but our poor lands are loafing because — like an assembly line where one vital i art is missing—they are lacking in one or more of the plant foods needed to keep up production." In telling how bottlenecks in plant hunger can be broken, Dr. Scarseth described some experiments which the Purdue Experiment Staff have been conducting in Indiana “on thin silt loams that had little of the juice of life left in them after years of taking out plant foods and returning little or nothing." 92 Bushels of Corn “A certain soil," he said, “was so worn out that it produced only 29 bushels of corn an acre where no fertilizer was used, but when given the right dosage of the kind of fertilizer that the soil needed, and when that fertilizer was put in the right place, this land produced 92 bushels of corn per acre. “Under the old methods, the crop was produced at a loss," he explained, “but under the new methods it yielded a net profit of $26 an acre." The experiments were started 9 years ago by Purdue University Experiment Station, to find out if possible what it takes to step up the period of poor soils in double-quick time and to bring them back into profitable production in one year. Assigned to the experimental work with Dr. Scarseth were Harry D. Cook, Alvin Ohirogge and Burt A. Krantz. Fertilizer Shows Results “The first bottleneck encountered in the nutrition of com," he said, “was lack of nitrogen in the midsummer season when most needed by the plants. In breaking this bottleneck the agronomists tried a new method of applying / fertilizer by placing it in a band on the plow sole when turning the land. This system puts the fertilizer down where the roots are going to operate; five to six inches deep. A special attachment to mount on a plow was developed at Purdue for feeding the fertilizer down behind the plow share into the furrow as the land is plowed.”